The boat found at Barangaroo - A national treasureThe boat found at Barangaroo - A national treasure 

In 2018 an archaeological site was uncovered during construction of Barangaroo Station on the new Sydney Metro network. Located on Gadigal Country on the shore of what was once known as Cockle Bay, this dig revealed the almost complete remains of a colonial-built boat, approximately 9 metres long by 3 metres wide, adjacent to a former boatyard.

This sensational find electrified archaeologists around Australia. Experts soon realised that this could be the earliest surviving European-style Australian-built vessel ever recovered, possibly built as early as 1800 and certainly voyaging on the local waters of Cockle Bay and beyond by the 1820s.

The vessel’s timbers were painstakingly excavated and documented, before undergoing extensive conservation treatment. Another 5,000 objects from the larger excavation site were also cleaned, partially conserved and catalogued. Together, they are elements of a story that is only beginning to be told. 

Ongoing research continues to shape what we know about this incredible survivor and its world.

Early Sydney Town was a small settlement, halfway across the globe from the heart of the British Empire. When the first full census was undertaken in 1828, the town boasted a mere 10,815 non-Aboriginal residents living in 1,773 homes. Today, half that number of people pass through Barangaroo Station at peak hour every weekday.

In 1828, Sydney was also a place where Aboriginal peoples – already deeply affected by colonisation that began in 1788 – still regularly fished, voyaged and traded with European settlers.

It was a deeply maritime town. Soldiers, convicts and free settlers arrived and departed by ship, along with commodities such as ceramics, glassware, food and weapons. Exports from the colony of New South Wales were also shipped out from Sydney, especially wool and grain. Fishing and whaling were major industries, with hardy mariners heading far out into the Pacific and Southern oceans.

Sydney Harbour itself was alive with boats. Some met arriving vessels to offer pilot services or trade goods. Others helped unload passengers and cargoes, including those smuggled into quiet bays, away from prying eyes. Small watercraft operated as ferries and delivered messages, while others formed fishing fleets or traded up the Parramatta and Hawkesbury rivers. These included boats used by Aboriginal owners or by Māori who had voyaged from Aotearoa New Zealand.

Some small craft even ventured through Sydney Heads to conduct regional trade. They voyaged up the coast to Broken Bay or Newcastle, or southward to Wollongong and the Illawarra. These small boats provided transport for people, supplies and information, heading to the constellation of satellite settlements established after Sydney’s founding.

Occasionally, convicts used such vessels for daring escapes, heading for Batavia (now Jakarta), China or ‘home’ – Great Britain.

Almost all of the colonial boats in New South Wales were made locally. As early as 1791, Australian timbers were being incorporated into European designs, in a process of trial and error. Like everything produced locally during these years, they were crafted by hand and shaped by the minds and eyes of their makers.

There were no factories or photographs, and precious few books. Boatbuilding skills were passed on by apprenticeships and within families. This was a make-and-mend world. It was a world in which our boat was handcrafted, repaired and worked hard for decades.

The vessel’s original name remains unknown. It may never have had one, although small vessels from this period were typically christened by their owners. Further research in historical archives may help give our boat back its rightful identity.

When first excavated, the boat was known simply as UDHB1 – Unidentified Darling Harbour Boat number 1. Archaeologists soon began referring to it as the ‘Barangaroo Boat’, since it was found at a place recently named Barangaroo. However, the boat had nothing to do with Barangaroo, a Cammeraygal woman who vigorously protested against early British colonisers who over-fished in Sydney Harbour. She died in 1791 and is unlikely to have ever seen this boat.

Many excavated boats are named after the places where they were found, including the Bremen Cog in Bremen, Germany; the Gokstad Ship in Gokstad, Norway; and the Sutton Hoo Ship at … you guessed it – Sutton Hoo in England!

We continue to investigate its history and perhaps, one day its real name will surface from the patchwork of records that survive from colonial New South Wales.

Currently, the boat’s entire hull timber assemblage is being documented and assessed by the museum’s registration and conservation teams. Registration-related tasks include assigning an accession number to each individual timber, documenting it with high-resolution digital photography, and entering relevant information into the museum’s collections database.

At the same time, the conservation team has initiated a regime of condition assessment, in which each timber’s current appearance and level of preservation is documented and established as a benchmark against which to compare the results of future condition monitoring.

Some tasks carried out in conjunction with condition reporting include identifying and denoting features of interest, such as breaks and cracks. Analysis will also note modern alterations, such as holes generated from incremental bore testing and sampled areas associated with timber species identification.

The conservation team is also cleaning each timber’s surface of residual polyethylene glycol from the conservation process, as well as removing loose pitch and repairing broken or damaged timbers prior to the hull being reconstructed. This is essential work to ensure that the boat continues to survive for decades or centuries to come.

The boat’s journey from the waterlogged silt and mud of Cockle Bay to the Australian National Maritime Museum could not have happened without the skill and dedication of many government and private entities. The site was archaeologically excavated for Sydney Metro by heritage consultancy firms Casey & Lowe and AMBS Ecology & Heritage. Maritime archaeological fieldwork was carried out by Cosmos Archaeology, and International Conservation Services provided conservation advice during removal of the boat and its associated artefacts. Conservation of the hull’s surviving timbers and artefact assemblage was provided by Silentworld Foundation and York Archaeological Trust, under contract to Sydney Metro.

If you would like to support the conservation and interpretation of this national treasure, please consider donating to the museum’s Foundation.